...get out your copy of Diana Ross's The Boss, whose title track is surely the best expression of joy since Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, and play it? Today? Right now? Awesome, ain't it? Open up the windows and let everybody else hear it too. We have a woman who'll serve the country as Speaker of the House. Every other country in the most-homes-wired-for-electricity world started electing women as presidents & prime ministers twenty or thirty years ago, but the US has clung tenaciously to its position that there's just something about women that's not quite suitable for the big-dog positions. When I say "the US" I leave the punctuation out on purpose: it hasn't been some secret cabal of men conspiring to keep all the cherry-picked spots for themselves. It's been us, the people, the electorate. We're the ones who've gone along with the really painfully strained sort of reasoning all this time, either in its old form ("everybody knows women aren't fit to lead") or in its neo-con remix ("it's just that there are these differences"). There is now a sliver of evidence that we might be getting past all that. Better late than never! Wither and die, patriarchy. Congratulations, Speaker Pelosi.

(NB: if the "I wasn't in control, love was" message of "The Boss" gives you trouble - I don't think it should, and I actually have about 1/2 of a schtick in explaining how that message is more radical than any gender, race, or class-based political angle could ever be, but world enough & time, etc - then I direct y'all to, from the same album, on a different emotional tip but still awesome & certainly as worth your ears today -

"IT'S MY HOUSE")